Beef-friendly Nebraska eyes regulations on the word ‘meat’

HWH Comment: The word ‘meat’ does not clearly come from livestock as Sen. Carol Blood claims. Meat has historically been used to refer to many types of plant food. Sen. Carol Blood should focus on turning Nebraska’s animal slaughter industries into plant meat industries or technology or anything other than continuing selling for consumption the atrocities committed against cattle and all other ‘destined for our plate’ animals. She lacks vision, hope, ingenuity and a better plan for the future of Nebraska. I’d say Nebraska needs a better advocate than one who advocates holding onto an industry that’s doomed.

There is no truth in advertising cattle as livestock. They’re deadstock. There is no truth to the claim that animals are on this earth as a food for human consumption. Animals are not food, except in the deviant minds of those who thirst for the blood and flesh of other creatures. Or by those who raise and sell victims of torture and slaughter for profit.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — More than four months after Missouri became the first U.S. state to regulate the term “meat” on product labels, Nebraska’s powerful farm groups are pushing for similar protection from veggie burgers, tofu dogs and other items that look and taste like real meat.

Nebraska lawmakers will consider a bill this year to prevent companies that package and sell food from advertising plant-based, insect-based and lab-grown products as meat. Similar measures are pending in Tennessee, Virginia and Wyoming.

The issue strikes a particularly strong chord in Nebraska, one of the nation’s top states for livestock production, where cars roll down the interstate with “Beef State” license plates and the governor each year proclaims May as “Beef Month.”

Farm groups have found an unusual ally in state Sen. Carol Blood, a city-dwelling vegetarian from the Omaha suburb of Bellevue. Blood, who grew up on a farm, said she introduced the measure because agriculture is Nebraska’s largest industry and needs to be protected for the good of the whole state.“

I’m not bringing this bill to tell people what they can and can’t eat,” she said. “All I’m asking for is truth in advertising. It’s clear that meat comes from livestock, and livestock is our livelihood in Nebraska.”

Nebraska led the nation in commercial red meat production in 2017 and had the most feed cows as of last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Livestock and livestock product sales generated an estimated $12.1 billion for the state’s economy in 2016, according to the USDA’s most recent available data.

The measure is certain to face resistance from food producers that sell plant-based alternatives, as well as those working with the emerging science of meat grown by culturing cells in a lab. Critics say the bill infringes on the free-speech rights of companies that produce vegetarian alternatives to real meat.

The Good Food Institute, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and plant-based food company Tofurkey have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Missouri law . They argue the law unfairly stifles competition.

The Nebraska bill “would censor food labels and create consumer confusion where there is none,” said Jessica Almy, director of policy for the Washington-based Good Food Institute. “You can’t censor speech just to promote one industry’s financial success.”…

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COMMENTARY

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